won't have any more of the good saveloy on his bread now, nor of the
joint from dinner either, ma'am he says it's 'always the same.' What am
I to do now?" she was delighted. At last she had succeeded in
instilling into him that people do not swallow everything thoughtlessly
without making any choice, just for the sake of eating something.

If she had seen how he stuffed bread and dripping with liver and
onion sausage on it down his throat at Frau Laemke's, or gobbled up
potato cake baked in oil hot from the pan, she would not have been so
delighted. But now she was grateful for every finer feeling she thought
she observed in him, be it ever so small. She did not notice at all
what tortures she caused herself in this manner.

Oh, why did not her husband help her to train him? If only he would.
But he no longer understood her.

Paul Schlieben had given up remonstrating with his wife. He had done
so several times, but what he had said had had no effect owing to the
obstinacy with which she held fast to her principles. Why should he
quarrel with her? They had lived so many years happily together--it
would soon be their silver wedding--and was this child, this boy who
could hardly write correctly as yet, into whose head the master was
just drilling the first rules in Latin--this child who after all had
nothing to do either with her or him--this outsider to separate him and
his wife now after they had been married so long? Rather than that it
would be better to let many things pass which it would perhaps
have been better for Kate to have done differently. Let her see how she
could manage the boy in her way--she was so very fond of him. And when
he, no longer the plaything, had outgrown her delicate hands, then he,
the man, was still there to make him feel a more vigorous hand.
Fortunately there was no deceit in the boy.

Paul Schlieben was not dissatisfied with Wolfgang. He certainly did
not show any brilliancy at school, he did not belong to the top boys of
his form by any means, but still he kept quite respectably in the
middle of it. Well, there was no need for him to be a scholar.

Paul Schlieben had not the same opinion as formerly of the things he
used to find in his younger years the only ones worth considering:
science, art, and their study. Now he was content with his calling as
merchant. And as this child had come into his life, had come into that
position without having done anything to bring it about himself,